Tevatron To Shut Down At End of 2011

universegeek writes "It appears Fermilab's Tevatron will be shutting down by the end of 2011. Rumors confirmed today at the ISP220 conference say that the DOE denied further funding for the project. Looks like the LHC is our only hope in the hunt for the Higgs after all."

Comments

Modern world has its priorities wrong

[hessian]

One silly recession, and everyone's going all budget cuts crazy. They're saving money so that we can have more big Wall Street firms making "profits" by selling financial instruments. The Chinese aren't fooled; they know our currency's about to crash and no amount of paper-shuffling will fix that. We're selling stuff to ourselves and calling it profit, just like in the dot-com boom, without "making" any new wealth.

In the meantime, the science programs we cut (to "save money") form the basis of our future. Our current economy is probably more of a transition than a permanent state. Anyone else think we're screwing up by spending so much time on shuffling paper around to earn money, and so little money on the technologies that could define our future?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[pellik]

Think of all the money we could save in the long run if instead of paying firefighters or police we just researched how to make everything fireproof and crimeproof.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Yvan256]

Anyone else think we're screwing up by spending so much time on shuffling paper around to earn money, and so little money on the technologies that could define our future?

Everybody who's not working for Wall Street firms, banks or lawyers. Unfortunately, it seems they're the assholes running this planet.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference: the doomsday scenario is real and the people from B ark are in charge.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[I8TheWorm]

Or, it could be that it's been rendered obsolete by the LHC which is larger and more powerful.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Monkeedude1212]

Because every observatory on Earth was rendered obsolete by Hubble, right?

Even an inferior Tevatron can produce results, two instruments operating at a time is often better than one really good one.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Straterra]

At least we'll have hairstylists!

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[s4m7]

could be, but it's not

The Physics Advisory Committee at Fermilab have announced their decision to continue running the Tevatron until 2014. It is easy to see why they want to do that: This years published results have strengthened the case for a light Higgs sector. In the mass range up to 150 GeV the rival Large Hadron Collider does not have such a big advantage and wont make the Tevatron obsolete until around 2014 when it’s higher energy and luminosity will finally trump the Tevatron at all mass scales.

from vixra, in september of last year.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Crimeproof? Oh, that's an easy one.
We have had that one solved for a while.
Put everyone... listen, put every, put everyone in cuffs on ankles AND wrists.
There is no chance people can run away now!

Of course, the only problem is, for equality reasons, the police were also in this, and, well, everyone, it is sort of like dividing everyones Speed attribute by 20. Still crime, just slower.
Damn, there goes that idea.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[sconeu]

Oh come on. How else can we give hundreds of billions of dollars to Wall Street banks? We all have to make sacrifices for them!

Won't somebody think of the bankers?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[afidel]

And that's assuming the LHC works on schedule, which so far it has failed to do. Also being able to recreate results (that are within the energy envelope on the Tevatron) with a different set of instruments is important to the scientific method.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[s4m7]

the creation of financial instruments is not even remotely akin to firefighting or policework. As a society, we would be fine (maybe better off) without CDO's. They were originally created because traditional investment markets were "tapped out" relative to the pool of investment cash. So instead of correctly driving up the value of REAL assets, we distributed that money into, and inflated the value of potential/imaginary assets. That's a big part of what fueled the decline of income requirements on home loans, and basically directly contributed to the economic situation we're in.

So instead of suggesting that we stop paying firefighters and police, what the parent was saying was more like "quit paying people to set fires and rob liquor stores, and increase research in making fires and crimes less likely to happen in the future"

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[lennier]

In the meantime, the science programs we cut (to "save money") form the basis of our future.

While that makes sense generally, I'm wondering just exactly what the ROI curve for expensive high-energy physics tools like the LHC and Tevatron actually is. The collider and hot fusion people keep saying 'fund us more and we'll get huge energy breakthroughs, but the reality always seems to fall a long way short.

Looking at the sweep of physics over the 20th century, it seems like most of the really big breakthroughs were achieved using tools that by today's standards were laughably primitive. The most cutting edge physics experiments of today - Bose-Einstein condensates, quantum teleportation - seem to be still confirming and not invalidating physics theories invented in the 1930s, on pencil and paper. Doesn't that strike anyone as a bit odd?

The high-water mark of literal 'bang for the buck' physics research seems to have been the H-bomb in the 1950s. Since then, from the outside, it seems to have been a long row of fiddling with ever subtler refinements of Standard Model equations which all tell us 'actually, no, you can't get unlimited free energy, flying cars, antigravity, unbound quark states - but we need to take more observations to be sure.'

Something about this isn't adding up for me. Studying electricity and magnetism got us a motherlode of radio and electronics. Studing nuclear decay got us bombs and reactors. Studying gravity, quarks and the strong and weak forces have got us.... crickets and tumbleweed.... what, exactly?

It's not that we haven't yet seen engineering applications for post-1960s high-energy physics. It's that the brightest minds seem to be telling us that it's theoretically increasingly unlikely for us to ever see the Standard Model invalidated, let alone any hope of engineering applications from itl. Yet we keep sinking money into colliders.

What is it that we're expecting to find in the big colliders that we haven't yet seen? What are the odds of finding it? Are we looking in the right place? If we are and are, is all the research being shared publically, or are the weapons guys keeping something back?

The amount of money spent chasing big physics vs the decreasing payoff just doesn't add up to me. I'd like to think there's a big conspiracy to hide some really neat bang somewhere, because otherwise it just seems very disappointing compared to the glory days of the 30s-50s.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Matthias Wiesmann]

This is one of the reasons instruments on the LHC are duplicated: Atlas and CMS. Given the difference of energy, if the Higgs is found in one of the LHC experiments, it is doubtful that the experiment could be reproduced at Tevatron.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Nadaka]

You are forgetting things like modern computer technology actually does take advantage of some advanced physics like quantum tunneling.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[I8TheWorm]

In funding amounts you're talking about two very different scales though.

I'm not saying it's a good thing, but as the other commenter said, by 2014 this one would be obsolete, and HUGELY expensive. I think in the near term that money could be used better elsewhere.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[andi75]

I think it was the famous 18th century mathematician Laplace who once said "there is no military application for number theory", and less then 150 years later, its applications (cryptography) where probably one of the deciding factors for the outcome of World War II.

I don't think we can rule out that high energy physics will give us cool stuff to play with eventually.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Monkeedude1212]

I'm not sure I see how it could be obsolete though? Is the LHC going to be done all its research by 2014? If so, why did we spend so much to build that one?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Maury Markowitz]

> The high-water mark of literal 'bang for the buck' physics research seems to have been the H-bomb in the 1950s

no no no no no! The transistor!

> that it's theoretically increasingly unlikely for us to ever see the Standard Model invalidated, let alone any hope of engineering applications from itl

That is precisely the problem. The SM is "mined out" in the same way all those California oil wells are. However, the funding machine (which, if anything, is the really interesting thing about CERN) continues to grind on under its own momentum.

What's worse is the possibility that LHC finds Higgs. If it does, HEP is basically finished. We have no idea how to build a machine to test anything over and above SM.

That said, if LHC fails to find the Higgs then, that is very interesting indeed. Sort of like the MMX. However, the MMX was built from scraps by a couple of guys in a basement and upset all of physics forever. I doubt that LHC will produce anything so dramatic.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Khomar]

The sad thing is that all of these budget cuts don't even come close to addressing the problem. Nearly all of the government spending comes down to four programs: 1) national defense, 2) welfare, 3) Social Security, and 4) Medicare. If you eliminated every other department in the government, I think you would come to about half of any one of these programs. Our deficit (the amount of money we spend more than we bring in every year) is over $1.5 trillion.

The four programs are all basically the same size. For the sake of convenience, let us call is $750 billion each. In order to eliminate our deficit (we'll work on the actual debt later), we have two options:

1) Cut all four programs in half.
2) Eliminate two programs -- take your pick.

That is what it has come down to, plain and simple. But no one has the courage to do what it will take to steer the ship aright.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

When the electron was discovered it was thought to be absolutely worthless, prediction is very hard, especially about the future.

Discovering the higgs will fill in the biggest hole in the standard model, it's what gives everything in the universe mass. And the hope is that hopefully the higgs decay pattern will point towards super-symmetry, which would be one of, if not the biggest discoveries in the history of science. Currently we can't explain, touch, see, 80% of the mass of the universe, I think trying to work out that massive gap in our knowledge is well worth the funding.

And, aside from all that-- it's a fantastic research facility that funds some of the greatest scientists on Earth, and it's on American soil. If the US keeps cutting science and research programs, then guess what, no US kid will want to move into science and the US will fade into the distance as Europe continues to dominate high-energy physics, and eventually, every other field.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[diegocg]

everyone's going all budget cuts crazy

Except the military budget. If someone manages to classify the Tevatron as a weapon and get it managed by the MoD, it won't be canceled.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[I8TheWorm]

Probably for the same reason we spent so much money building the Superconducting Super Collider outside of Dallas. Someone in congress wanted to spend money on their constituents. In the end it was never used.

I don't think spending the money on it is a bad thing, but I think spending it when we're close to bankrupt is a stupid thing.

Of note, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider still exists, and the SLHC is on the books.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Whiternoise]

You're forgetting that although the current research into the Standard Model (et al) hasn't given us much directly in the way of tangible technology, the getting there has spun off a lot of extremely important technology. The WWW is an obvious one, as is an increased knowledge of superconducting materials. We also use particle accelerators for medical purposes, synchrotron radiation (mid 1940's) is incredibly useful for irradiating things and we've got to the point where we can scale the technology down to a level where you don't need a warehouse to perform experiments.

CERN brought us advances in grid computing as well as the aforementioned WWW and continues to fuel this area of research. There are also dedicated research groups in CERN who deal with medical applications for Hadrons.

Similar arguments apply for NASA - oh, what has the human space flight program ever done for the world - well, nothing if you take it at face value, but if you look at the technological developments required to actually achieve what we have, they're worth a lot more than we paid to send astronauts into space.

This is all ignoring the fact that we spend far, far, far, far more money on the defence budget (speaking as a UK citizen, the US is similarly and more disproportionate) which again, churns out some decent research, but also utterly dwarfs the budget for say, the Tevatron.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[diegocg]

You might be right, the LHC and the Tevatron might be useless. But we turning them off will not help to decide the outcome.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Thud457]

This is how you can tell the recent discovery of "fiscal conservatism" by Congress is a kettle of bullshit.
If they really thought things were really that dire, they'd be talking about cutting the military (and/or SS / MC).
Instead, it's a stalking horse to cut "projects I don't like".

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[hedwards]

Indeed. Additionally, while the LHC is much more powerful, the Tevatron is still useful, I'm sure that there are still experiments for which it's of use. At very least it could be used to run the experiments that LHC is too busy for.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[TooMuchToDo]

As someone who has worked on the computing side of both the Tevatron and the LHC (CMS detector), it's time to stop pumping money into the Tevatron and let the LHC shine. Lets not let nostalgia get in the way of new science.

Fairwell Tevatron! Thanks for all the luminosity!

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Whiternoise]

Also, this: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/benefits/

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[dkf]

Discovering the higgs will fill in the biggest hole in the standard model, it's what gives everything in the universe mass.

Strictly, it's the rest masses of the fundamental particles that are determined by the Higgs field. However, the majority of mass of "ordinary" matter - i.e., protons and neutrons - is actually due to the (enormous) binding energy in the color field that is holding the quarks together. When I first found that out, I found it pretty amazing; it goes to show just how important relativity is.

And, aside from all that-- it's a fantastic research facility that funds some of the greatest scientists on Earth, and it's on American soil. If the US keeps cutting science and research programs, then guess what, no US kid will want to move into science and the US will fade into the distance as Europe continues to dominate high-energy physics, and eventually, every other field.

I believe that Fermilab are going to be focusing on other research fields, and they are also one of the main sites in the US that handles data coming from CERN. They're still a cutting-edge lab.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Colonel Korn]

A very large fraction of biomedical research and nanoscale self assembling materials research is dependent on unfathomably expensive high energy physics tools like the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne. Without this kind of beam we'd have lost a big chunk of the most impressive medical treatments now available and a lot of computer technology we take for granted, and the next generation of technology (meaning a 30 year generation, not an iPhone generation) is going to be an order of magnitude more dependent on high energy scattering. And the generation after that will likely include things like fusion.

The thing that's not adding up for you is your lack of knowledge about recent research. If anything, long term research pays off much more now than it did in the early 20th century. And you even point out that we're just now realizing things theorized or primitively demonstrated back then, which is a further demonstration of the huge long-term payoff of basic science research!

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[pipatron]

Do you know where to find this information online? I'm a little handicapped trying to google up things like this since I'm not a U.S. citizen, so I don't really know where to start. Still, it would be interesting to see.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Chakra5]

Someone tip this fellow a leaf and perhaps he'll go away...

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The Large Hadron Collider, a.k.a the largest scientific endeavor in human history, cost 6 billion dollars.

A Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier costs 8.5 billion dollars, and the US Navy will be introducing ten such aircraft carriers into their arsenal, the equivalent of fourteen LHCs.

I don't think it's science programs that need to be cut.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Khomar]

Here is a chart of the spending by department.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?get_gallerynr=172

In my post, I may have overstated the size a bit. So I guess we have one additional option -- instead of eliminating two programs, we can eliminate one and then all other government spending. :-)

Here is an article placing the current US deficit at $1.5 trillion:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aNaqecavD9ek

Another interesting site is ShadowStats which shows a more accurate representation of government figures that they have been manipulating over the past three decades.

http://www.shadowstats.com/

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[raddan]

And, it should be pointed out, Americans can only work at LHC through a sponsoring member instituition such as a member university (like my alma mater, Boston University). Direct participation in work at the LHC (e.g., being employed there) is only available to citizens belonging to EU member nations. Shutting down Fermilab makes it even LESS desirable to become a physicist in the United States.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[LordNacho]

Even I think that, and I work in finance.

If there were prospects for a young engineer from Oxford, maybe I wouldn't have done what most of the other engineering students did. I think it took one term before everyone realised you can work your ass off for decades designing stuff and getting paid peanuts, or you can work your ass off for a few years designing derivatives and get paid ten times that. Who in their right mind wouldn't go for the gold? That's what society is telling young engineers to go do.

True story: a derivs trader I knew was an engineer (a real one). Asked why he quit early on to work in the City: "I found out what my boss makes."

As it happens, I've carved myself a comfortable niche in the finance world, but for most people who ask me about it, I tell them it's not worth it. Long hours, lots of politics, and in the end, you'll never feel you're paid enough. And in the meantime, (if you're and engineer) you'll wonder what you could have done. My personal favourites: space ships, Formula 1, chip design.

There really are too many kids who want to work in finance. The thing is, they don't have much of a passion for finance either (it does have interesting bits, just not where everyone thinks). These kids end up screwing up both finance AND the rest of the world. Don't do it, kids.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[LordNacho]

At various times people have thought there's no more to learn, and we've got it right. Even the Romans thought that. And there's a quote from around the turn of the century (1900, I forget who) saying something to that effect... that all we can do is measure the constants ever more finely. And then relativity and quantum came along not long after.

I don't know if I hope you're right or you're wrong, funnily enough.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[the_one(2)]

Mod parent +1 perspective!

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Gibbs-Duhem]

Actually, you're just demonstrating her point.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling

Quantum tunneling was first theoretically understood in 1927, and since then it's just been a matter of engineering to take advantage of it. I think her point was that if it's taken 80 years to develop discoveries experimentally evaluated using relatively primitive and low-energy techniques, how much longer is it going to take to every apply something which requires the LHC just to observe. I agree with her, both as a physicist, and as an engineer. There are intrinsic difficulties in applying physical principles which require energy densities which approach that found in the Big Bang.

I don't agree that it means we shouldn't do it, because inquiring minds want to know. However, I do agree that duplicating effort in an attempt to discover things a few months sooner is more about scientist/politician pride than about sane expenditures of resources. If the LHC is the better piece of equipment, then mothball the Tevatron since they're nominally collecting similar data, except that the LHC uses better equipment. All that matters, as there are unlikely to be any national security/interest in the results, is that everyone has access to the data.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[thatskinnyguy]

You're retarded. Science is a financial instrument. Think about it.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[servognome]

At least we aren't dead from "a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone"

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Chris Burke]

If there were prospects for a young engineer from Oxford, maybe I wouldn't have done what most of the other engineering students did. I think it took one term before everyone realised you can work your ass off for decades designing stuff and getting paid peanuts, or you can work your ass off for a few years designing derivatives and get paid ten times that. Who in their right mind wouldn't go for the gold? That's what society is telling young engineers to go do.

Um, I may be getting paid peanuts compared to you hot shots in finance, but it's a pretty damn comfortable living, and I love the work both because it's challenging and because I'm making things that are real. Being able to actually go out and buy a ridiculously complicated achievement of technology, that I helped design, is very gratifying.

So to me your question sounds like "Who in their right mind doesn't prioritize making the maximal amount of money over making as much as they need and then some and enjoying what they do?" and the answer would be "Everyone who is in their right mind." Not to presume you don't enjoy what you do. But it strikes me as crazy to give up something I love and can make a good living at, for something I don't because it has a bigger payoff.

I can still completely understand what you're saying about where we as a society are directing young potential engineers. It's society itself that equates money with worth and tells people that they're suckers for merely being able to buy a nice home and car (and computer) instead of the bestest home and car. And we show them through actions that the engineers are disposable, and the financial analysts indispensable. Because the latter make more money and are thus more worthy.

   

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[SETIGuy]

There's another option that everyone seems to forget. We could put our tax rates back where they were in 1980. Or 1970. Or 1960. (Brackets adjusted for inflation of course). But no one has the courage to do what it will take to steer the ship aright.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[khallow]

I think it was the famous 18th century mathematician Laplace who once said "there is no military application for number theory", and less then 150 years later, its applications (cryptography) where probably one of the deciding factors for the outcome of World War II.

Assuming he did really say that, then he was wrong at the time he said that. Many of the key cryptography discoveries and ideas could have been made any time in the past few centuries and they would have been valuable at the time. The problem was that society wasn't ready for the knowledge created in number theory. Since then, those profound changes have occurred. There's no conceivable restructuring of society that allows us to use quantum field theory or string theory where we couldn't before. Instead, we'll need some sort of technological advance until we're actually manipulating useful structures at subatomic scales.

Here's the thing. What is the advantage of aggressive, expensive exploration through to Planck scales when we're a long ways off from doing anything useful at those scales? Governments back then didn't throw the equivalent of billions of dollars a year at number theory. Yet it worked out for them. Now if they did, we might just have had serious computers and miniaturization in the early 19th century. Or we might had a bunch of really expensive theorems. I think the latter.

The problem that people continually seem to ignore is that merely funding science doesn't guarantee that we get useful science, either to us now or to our descendants centuries from now. And given the common lack of interest in insuring that the science done is productive and useful, I don't see why we should expect big things in the far future from this science. Keep in mind that most scientists prior to around 1950, for the most part had to show concrete and useful near future results from time to time. These need not have an obvious price tag attached. For example, the method of least squares was first developed to predict the current position of the asteroid, Ceres. Knowing that position didn't help humanity in an obvious way back then, but it did save a lot of time in the hunt for Ceres. And astronomy was important because it was a big boon to sea navigation and was thought to be an accurate means of keeping time (at least till the effects of the speed of light were discovered).

Keep in mind that the great minds of the past, which boast of the uselessness of science, had some degree of mundane incentives to produce useful things. And they did. I think it is unwise to mythologize the past and assume on that basis that one can continue the progress of the past without the incentives and goals prevalent in the past.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[LordNacho]

It's not that simple, unfortunately. I also have to think about having a family, and getting them a good education, so they can understand and appreciate the world. Here in the UK, and in many parts of the world, that means paying for it. Paying A LOT of money. So much that you don't see how that's possible on a normal income. So dangle a few years in finance in front of any grad, and of course they grab it.

When I was offered an internship in engineering, the pay was so low I didn't think I could rent a flat (and eat 3 meals a day). And also, the industry feels stagnant. People are always complaining about engineers not being appreciated, and British industry going down the tube. Not really something that sounds like where you want to be.

Hey, there is some sort of relative income level where I'd be happy to design stuff, but when the deals are so skewed that in a single year in finance you can make what an engineer has made his whole life, well, you have to do what's right for your descendants. Maybe they can go build stuff, and I'll appreciate that.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Belial6]

The theoretical science was understood in 1927. It took 80 years to produce results. Do you think that in 1927 they thought that the science they were doing on paper would end in toys that kids play with in their living rooms? Of course not. THAT is why we need to continue to do cutting edge science. Not because we will get results tomorrow, but because some of it may very well end up in home appliances in 80 years.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Chris Burke]

Hey, there is some sort of relative income level where I'd be happy to design stuff, but when the deals are so skewed that in a single year in finance you can make what an engineer has made his whole life, well, you have to do what's right for your descendants.

I don't care about the skew relative to some other job, I only care if the pay in the job I want is adequate.

Which it sounds like it really wasn't for the opportunities you had in Britain, which is truly a shame.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[MrMadnutz]

Yep, we have a Beowulf from 2006, but it still gets results! They wouldn't be cost effective if we bought the same thing now of course, but it's a great resource for those who optimize their code :)

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[lgw]

There's a bunch of handy info in the link in my sig.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[SETIGuy]

Probably for the same reason we spent so much money building the Superconducting Super Collider outside of Dallas. Someone in congress wanted to spend money on their constituents. In the end it was never used.

I think you're forgetting the fact that the President was also from Texas and had some influence over the DOE during site selection.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Chris Burke]

However, I do agree that duplicating effort in an attempt to discover things a few months sooner is more about scientist/politician pride than about sane expenditures of resources.

Maybe for those proximate to the actual decision to spend the money.

But for us, it's about enhancing our descendants' lives in ways we can't even imagine today, just like those who worked on quantum tunneling couldn't have imagine the things created using applications of their research. If it takes a hundred years for such applications to become commonplace, so what? The return on investment of that research was unfathomable.

If the LHC is the better piece of equipment, then mothball the Tevatron since they're nominally collecting similar data, except that the LHC uses better equipment.

More data is more data, and the Tevatron is still doing good work today even though the LHC already exceeds its power. However I'm ultimately not too sad over the Tevatron being mothballed because the LHC is the better instrument.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[blind biker]

You are forgetting things like modern computer technology actually does take advantage of some advanced physics like quantum tunneling.

Quantum tunneling was researched and studied in the 1950s and earlier. I have on my lap, as I write this, William Shockley's "Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors", first published in November 1950. This is still one of the best books on stuff such as quantum states, mechanics and tunneling. Here's a link to the history of research on quantum tunneling. Please do note the years of the milestones.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[glwtta]

Or, 75 years from now, we do discover a practically unlimited free energy source, which makes all previous technological advancements laughable in comparison.

You're trying to quantify the unknown. That typically doesn't work well.

Looking at the sweep of physics over the 20th century, it seems like most of the really big breakthroughs were achieved using tools that by today's standards were laughably primitive.

Doesn't that sort of imply that widespread application of discoveries made today will be seen when today's tools are considered laughably primitive?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[lennier]

A very large fraction of biomedical research and nanoscale self assembling materials research is dependent on unfathomably expensive high energy physics tools like the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne

Light sources do seem to be one of the most immediately useful applications of accelerators, yes. But those aren't actually a direct result of the quest for new physics, are they? The beam intensities that most of the light sources operate at are nowhere near pioneering research-grade. It's all old physics. New engineering, yes, but not new physics.

And the generation after that will likely include things like fusion.

See, that right there is the assumption I query.

If the history of controllable hot fusion has taught us one thing, it's that sustainable breakeven is not around the corner, and that attempting to get there costs an increasing amount yet keeps the mirage at just about the same distance in the future.

And that's strange to me, because Project Matterhorn started right after Manhattan, and uncontrolled fusion - the H-bomb - was a spectacular success. If there was one self-evident certainty in physics in the 1950s, it was that controllable fusion was the future of energy.

And yet 60 years later, it's still not. And it costs us more and more each year to verify that yes, we still can almost, but not quite, do it. We've become accustomed to a huge spiral of diminishing returns - and yet this awareness hasn't translated into a change in our belief that eventually we're going to crack it.

Maybe we are, and that'll be really fun if we do. But maybe we aren't. The curve suggests that we're on a solid course for 'aren't'.

This has huge implications for things like peak oil and climate change. Most of us tech-types are still operating on the assumption that the oil peak is a glitch and fusion is going to save all our asses. But what if it doesn't? Are we psychologically prepared to cope for the "we split the atom and went to the moon and now we can't even run tractors anymore???"

Because if we don't get some huge physics breakthrough, that's where we're headed. And increasingly, it looks like our lines of research are not pointing towards breakthroughs, but merely evolutionary finessing of the same grim equations: more people, less energy.

And you even point out that we're just now realizing things theorized or primitively demonstrated back then, which is a further demonstration of the huge long-term payoff of basic science research!

Once again: we're achieving new engineering of old physics concepts today, not new physics. Despite physics being the star of the sciences for decades, getting all the press and glamour, and a huge amount of government support right down to the level of 'born secret' classification.

From, say, the 1890s to the 1960s, there was this huge burst of conceptual revolution in basic physics. Everything seemed up for grabs, including logic itself being rewritten by quantum physics, flight in air and space, and the ability to destroy global civilisation with a button-press. It looked like a dead cert for this burst of innnovation at the basic physics level to continue.

But it didn't. For the next 60 years, we've been on the descending slope of the physics innovation curve - while still being on the midpoint of the engineering and applications curve.

Since most of us in the IT trade have been riding that late bulge in semiconductors, I don't think it's sunk in for us that the rest of physics hasn't kept up with Moore's Law. When it does, look out.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[c0lo]

One silly recession, and everyone's going all budget cuts crazy. They're saving money so that we can have more big Wall Street firms

In other words, there are real, huge and long-lived black-holes already in action, why do we need yet one extra way that only would hypothetically produce one at atto-scale living for so short that you need years to study the data see if you actualy create one, eh?
You see... it is called efficiency and it is an attribute of the capitalistic world and free-markets in action... or so some scoundrels are trying to convince me.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[kanguro]

Or you could apply for UEU citizenship and feel the power

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[c0lo]

Not because we will get results tomorrow, but because some of it may very well end up in home appliances in 80 years.

Fuck yeah... I want my grand-grand children to play with at least the Tevatron when toddlers.
(note: take a pill to boots your humor detection sense, the amount of it in my post is tiny. Don't bother though with troll-detection pils, though).

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[c0lo]

The problem that people continually seem to ignore is that merely funding science doesn't guarantee that we get useful science, either to us now or to our descendants centuries from now.

While there's no guarantee, I haven't seen any progress yet in the absence of science, so looks to me as science (and funding it thereof) might be still needed.

Keep in mind that the great minds of the past, which boast of the uselessness of science, had some degree of mundane incentives to produce useful things. And they did. I think it is unwise to mythologize the past and assume on that basis that one can continue the progress of the past without the incentives and goals prevalent in the past.

That's interesting. Posted already, can't mod anymore.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[khallow]

While there's no guarantee, I haven't seen any progress yet in the absence of science, so looks to me as science (and funding it thereof) might be still needed.

I think you're right. But what I see as a growing problem is the assumption that funding is science. Just because the money is spent doesn't mean it was spent well or even that it was spent on the intended goal.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[c0lo]

While there's no guarantee, I haven't seen any progress yet in the absence of science, so looks to me as science (and funding it thereof) might be still needed.

I think you're right. But what I see as a growing problem is the assumption that funding is science. Just because the money is spent doesn't mean it was spent well or even that it was spent on the intended goal.

"Spent well" is a hind-sight concept and yes, science is about taking risks as well. Also, "spent well" correlates with "I don;t have enough for everything, thus I need to prioritize". If you agree, then we have a ground to make considerations on the current budgeting priorities (and I'd argue that better cut opportunities are found in other areas).
What I can however guarantee you: if you don't spend any on science, you finish burning the Quran as a civic duty or having laws that punish blasphemy by death. Is it better?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Anspen]

3) Raise taxes. I know it's blasphemy in the US, but budget balancing can involve both sides of the equation.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[DerekLyons]

However, the funding machine (which, if anything, is the really interesting thing about CERN) continues to grind on under its own momentum.

That said, if LHC fails to find the Higgs then, that is very interesting indeed. Sort of like the MMX. However, the MMX was built from scraps by a couple of guys in a basement and upset all of physics forever.

Yep, and even though it upset all of physics forever, the funding mechanism still ground on for nearly a century - the last date I can find of someone trying to refine the results of the MMX is in the 1970's.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[mako1138]

The collider and hot fusion people keep saying 'fund us more and we'll get huge energy breakthroughs, but the reality always seems to fall a long way short.

I don't think the collider/HEP folks have ever promised energy breakthroughs; that's not what they're interested in. Collider science is pure science.

The DOE fusion budget, on the other hand, has basically been falling monotonically since the 1970s.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[ziggyzaggy]

what's at stake with the LHC is Knowing how the universe is put together.

the Higgs boson is the capstone of the Standard Model and was proposed in 1964. If we don't find that with LHC, Standard Model fails.

The cost of all HEP ever done is negligible compared to the cost of wars to line the pockets of the elite and bailouts to prop up their failed business model.

there are other experiments on structure of universe going on beside the LHC, dark matter detection and CMB mapping too.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[geekoid]

idiots like you have been saying are currency is about to crash for at least 40 years.

The same idiots who think Social Secerity is failing. Of course when sho factual numbers, it's all bluster, lies, and logical fallacy's as a
rebuttal'

technology doesn't define a futures, it's lays out knowledge and tools. we determine our future.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Type44Q]

Studying gravity, quarks and the strong and weak forces have got us.... crickets and tumbleweed.... what, exactly?

Perhaps nothing at all... but someone should point out that there's a huge body of evidence which suggests that highly-classified technologies (such as advanced "blue sky" propulsion methods, gravitation manipulation, etc) might be more than just rumors. Numerous people including Ben Rich (former head of Lockheed's Skunk Works), a senior aviation analyst at Jane's Information Group (don't recall his name), Paul Hellyer (Canada's former Minister of Defense), John Lear (record-breaking pilot and son of Learjet founder William Lear Jr) and countless military personnel have risked their careers and reputations with their claims in support of this. Hell, there've been reports from all over the world for over a decade of large, black triangular-shaped craft (according to the Internet, it even has a name: the "TR-3B"); I met a college professor who claimed to have witnessed it and his daughter (an officer in the U.S.A.F.) even gave a smug, knowing smile but refused to acknowledge or speculate.

Me, I take it all with a grain of salt. It could all be misinformation, I suppose... however, in my meager twenty or so years of adult life, I've learned that reality is a strange and surreal setting... and there's plenty about it that doesn't jibe with what I was taught in my history and science textbooks. I guess that makes me willing to consider all possibilities.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Roger W Moore]

Even an inferior Tevatron can produce results, two instruments operating at a time is often better than one really good one.

True but that is the wrong question to ask. What you should be asking is whether funding the Tevatron is better than say a massively upgraded B factory, or R&D on a 1TeV electron-positron collider, or a new neutrino experiment etc. etc. This is not a cut to the US budget but simply a choice to redeploy the funds to different research projects in the field.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[nametaken]

That's a fair point. But the other way to look at it is, understanding how things work and verifying it has some value. Considering we spent $18 Million on a website redesign for Recovery.gov, and apparently are spending $500 Million on the SSA for a system that won't work... it seems like the $100 Million for the Tevatron would have been pretty reasonable.

Also, aren't they idling the LHC for a year? Seems like it would be useful to have a working collider in the meantime.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what? I work on the Tevatron, and now I'm drunk because I'm depressed about it. It wouldn't have been all that expensive in goverment terms. $105 million over 3 years ($35 million a year) is all it would take. How many minutes of an Iraq or Afghanistan war is that? 5? So screw you.

There's real, legit science that can be done at the Tevatron (because it's a proton-antiproton collider and has an asymmetric initial state) that simply can't be done at the LHC (because it's a proton-proton collider and has a symmetric initial state). Also, if my word isn't good enough for you, let me point out that the director-general of CERN and the director of Fermilab got together several months ago and released a statement that said that there was significant and real physics motivation for running both machines, that the Tevatron could make observations about the Higgs and other phenomena that the LHC couldn't, and that it was way more valuable to have both machines that the sum of having each of them separately. OTOH, Oddone (FNAL director) is too committed to the BS intensity frontier and neutrino physics that can be better done elsewhere to actually fight for the original and primary mission of his lab, so here we are. Maybe we can get private funding from Elon Musk or somebody to do it. Oh well.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[The_Wilschon]

I remember a quote from somebody or other that it was easy in the 30s-50s for a second rate physicist to do first rate work, but that now it's difficult for a first rate physicist to do second rate work. Yes, the 30s-50s were glory days in a way. Mostly, this is because the things that we discovered and worked to understand in those days have worked their way into actual engineered and mass-produced products today.

Suppose that I took a hollow shape and drilled a small hole in it, then heated it up and measured the spectrum of light that came out of the hole. Do you think it would be interesting or useful to understand just why that spectrum is shaped exactly the way it is? Probably not. Yet that led us to quantum mechanics, and I've it said that 75% of the world's economy today is due to quantum mechanics.

I do not propose that the research being done today at the Tevatron, the LHC, RHIC, JLab, SLAC, Belle, etc. will have that sort of impact during our lifetimes. But there are a lot of things that we would like to be true (Faster-than-light travel to other planets, instant teleportation from place to place, and lots and lots of other classic SF material), and there is really only one place left for them to be possible: higher and higher energies. There are a lot of ways that things like special relativity could break down in regimes we don't understand that would make those ideas possible. From knowing they were possible to building them, there would be one heck of an engineering challenge, but we certainly can't do it if we don't understand the underlying physics.

Finally, we have to keep the momentum that we have built. If we lose all the accumulated working knowledge in this generation of physicists, then we may not be able to build another collider whenever we determine that we are far enough along that it is worthwhile. I think it's better to go ahead and acquire the knowledge now, and go ahead and get started on any centuries-long engineering problems that the results suggest than to wait 100 years and then say "collider? what's that? how do you build one?".

Finally, finally, there may be an endpoint in sight. It might well be that the LHC does not discover anything new at all. Maybe there is simply nothing out there that is remotely within our reach. At that point, collider physics would be over, and almost nobody would argue that it should be different. OTOH, as long as we keep finding new stuff and finding hints that there may be more new stuff around the corner, it seems totally reasonable to keep pursuing it.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Nirvelli]

I think you're looking for G. H. Hardy.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[ShakaUVM]

>>Most of us tech-types are still operating on the assumption that the oil peak is a glitch and fusion is going to save all our asses. But what if it doesn't? Are we psychologically prepared to cope for the "we split the atom and went to the moon and now we can't even run tractors anymore???"

Not going to happen. We have coal reserves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Arterion]

If what you're saying is true, though, then do finance for a while, get a nice pile of cash, then do something you love -- like engineering -- on your own terms.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Wandering Idiot]

-- You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC

I looked up the book in your sig, because it sounded interesting and I thought it might be an overview of how the nervous and biochemical systems spread throughout the body influence cognition, but instead it's just Cartesian Dualism. Again. It was perhaps forgivable in the times before we had MRI, knew what neurons are, or had an extensive body of literature on the effects of physiological damage on cognition, but at this point it's just a bit silly.

Did the authors at least abuse and intentionally misunderstand quantum physics in the process? That seems to be the method currently in fashion for those who really, really, want to believe that we are fundamentally different from all other forms of matter in the universe (I don't lump Penrose in with them, as he at least knows the physics, although his conclusions seem misguided).

In short, your opinions on scientific matters are suspect. Particle physics research does seem to be at something of a plateau currently in terms of real-world applications, but if we discover and then find some way to manipulate Higgs bosons down the line, or something of the sort, calling the LHC useless will look extremely myopic.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[naich]

While that makes sense generally, I'm wondering just exactly what the ROI curve for expensive high-energy physics tools like the LHC and Tevatron actually is.

Why do we need to justify it in these terms anyway? What is wrong with doing science just to find things out? Maybe as a species we should try to have loftier ideals in life, rather than grubbing around in the dirt with the bankers, trying to justify our curiosity and thirst for knowledge by thinking up with ways it will make money?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[knarf]

No, seriously, don't do it. Instead buy a farm (it helps to have some money here so you might want to keep that job for as long as it takes to make enough to buy the farm) and get crackin' doing your own engineering. Work towards getting your farm self-sufficient in ways which interest you - food, power, materials, you name it. You won't make money worth mentioning - though you might make a bit if you come up with a successful technological refinement - but you'll have fun and you'll be doing something useful for yourself instead of for the stuffed suits.

Just call you farm 'Mars' and you can live up to your childhood dreams of colonizing strange new worlds :-)

I'm sure there are many other ways to live your own life but the important bit is to stop following - and feeding - 'the street'.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[lingon]

No, that's not what the parent said. Read the post again. What he suggested was that exploring high energy physics may result in discoveries that are useful at NTP conditions in average Joe's living room, not that everyone should have a supercollider. While the latter would be extremely cool, the former is very reasonable.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[prefec2]

If you have a problem with Wall Street and think that long term investments in real stuff (e.g. schools, research institutes, health etc.) than you are evil. At least in the US. To be honest if I look at the US media, it seams that the USA is in big trouble. Most of the news is propaganda or disinformation. Especially on Fox News.
The US GDP is mostly based on Wall Street (compared to other Western countries) and Wall Street works as a big casino or better some sort of pyramid game. As long as people get money from somewhere else and put it in Wall Street, stocks rise, profits are made, and the sun shines. However, in the end you, US citizens, have to pay all these profits, but you can't your country already has a trade balance deficit.

So I always wonder how you still elect every time the same idiots which are the cause of that mess. However, I also wonder why Germans elected their present government and are now highly disappointed by it. Because the government in Germany is presently doing what they promised before election. Mess with the social security system in favor of banks and insurance companies, make gifts for the well suited, and try to be the egotist in the EU.

BTW: When I look at France or Italy (oh me God) or at Hungary (with they new media law) we are all governed by idiotic egotists. But maybe we are just too disconnected to the real problems in the world. Well see.

And maybe it is enough to have one such super machine available. When we are through with it, we (as in all humans) can built the next one. Preferably in an area with a working electric infrastructure.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[lingon]

Or I should have just read your entire post before posting. Oh, well, sorry about that :)

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[prefec2]

We already did the first one (mostly). There are not that many burned down houses around me. Honestly I haven't seen any in years (except from TV). And there is an easy way to reduce crime. Care about the poor and do not treat them as second class citizens. That also applies to people in other countries and other countries.

So to say. We already did it. We are just not implementing it.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[lingon]

And the generation after that will likely include things like fusion.

See, that right there is the assumption I query.

If the history of controllable hot fusion has taught us one thing, it's that sustainable breakeven is not around the corner, and that attempting to get there costs an increasing amount yet keeps the mirage at just about the same distance in the future.

ITER would like to disagree with you there.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[prefec2]

Most of the advances in physics we did in the 1920s resulted in new technology in the 1960s to 1980s and even today. For example lasers, laser diodes, masks for chip design, transistors, fiber optics, CDs, GPS (and why it did not work at first) and many more. But where did these breakthroughs came from? researches looked at the models present at that time and where not able to explain a lot with them. So they tried to perfect them. They found out that there is no ether. And they found out that light as a fixed speed in vacuum. Without these results there would be no WIFI or mobile phone as we would not be able to calculate all tat antenna stuff we need for it.

At the moment we have a model which is able explain a lot, but it cannot explain gravity and the properties of mass and gravity and how they are related. So further research in that area is still required. What we can spare ourselves is trying to built a fusion reactor. We have one it is work perfectly since -5,000,000,000 B.C. (6000 B.C. for creationists) and it will work in a positive way for the next 2,000,000,000 years. Then we have to find us a new location. So we should work at better collectors for that reactor (e.g. better wind turbines, solar panels etc.)

   

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[LordNacho]

This is very logical, and is exactly what people think they will be doing...

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[jpapon]

There's enough fossil fuels left in the ground to power us for a good, long time (i.e. coal). Not to mention, we still have the ugly sister of fusion, fission, to help us out.

Your points about physics innovation stagnating are interesting, but I think you're forgetting two important events; the two World Wars. The massive achievements which applied the theoretical physics you spoke of were almost all a direct result of the wars.

We still have massive defense budgets today, but I would argue that the best and brightest minds don't go into Defense research. So while defense research is still well funded, it doesn't pull in the intellectual capital it did in the forties and fifties. And as you say, funding does not equal progress.

What's my point? Well, clearly we need another big war... Unfortunately, I don't think the world can survive another round of progress-through-warfare. For as my buddy Albert said "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones"

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[corrie]

ISS: €100 billion

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Marianne013]

It should be pointed out that this is because the United States refuse to fully join CERN, not because of some Euro-centric protectionism.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Prof.Phreak]

Yet we keep sinking money into colliders.

I'd argue we're not sinking enough... if we were, the project would never get canceled. The reason LHC likely won't get killed, is that it's essentially a welfare program for scientists of EU---works out great---society employs the brightest folks to do *possibly* useful research for future generations. Also national (regional) prestige. Frankly, I'd rather we spend moneh on such gov welfare programs than on modern-day department of defense...

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Rich0]

Yes, but my understanding is that the APS wasn't built for high-energy physics - it was built exactly for the purpose which it is being used for, which is what makes it so useful. I think the original complaint is that we're throwing a lot of money on "build the biggest collider" without much ROI.

Also, from what I've seen of most use of sychotron radiation for less exotic experiments the utilization of the equipment is suboptimal. We could probably get by with less of these machines if we used them more efficiently. In most cases that I've seen some lab has a bunch of crystals and they want to collect diffraction patterns on them (just one use case for these machines). They schedule time on a beam, travel to the site, learn how to use the equipment, and then collect their data.

A much more efficient system would be for them to just pay a fee like any other fee-for-service system, ship out the crystals, and then get a file emailed to them containing their data. The data collection would be performed by experts at that particular skill, and it wouldn't take blocks of solid days of scheduling. Submissions just get in line, and pricing ensures that there is not too much demand and that people are throwing junk into the queue. Scientists could of course get grant money for this just like anything else.

Now, experimenters actually looking to discover new techniques/etc might still need to schedule time in the more traditional way, since they might need to mess with the machine/etc. Nothing wrong with this. I just never understood why people needed to travel halfway across the country to use some super-expensive piece of equipment that they were barely qualified to operate inefficiently. Imagine if when you needed a blood test that you were given a needle and shown how to take your own blood, and then you flew to a lab and they showed you how to do an LDL analysis or whatever.

We treat too much of routine science as if it were cutting edge, and this is part of why it is so expensive.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[GameboyRMH]

How is this guy any worse than a banker? And there are some lawyers who are worse than just about everyone.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[tehcyder]

We already did the first one (mostly). There are not that many burned down houses around me. Honestly I haven't seen any in years (except from TV)

I am totally baffled. Do you really think that there are no fires any more? What do you think firemen do all day, just practise their dance moves for their evening jobs as strippers?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[prefec2]

I would go for dance moves. However, I know that they have to do a lot. At car crashes, bio hazards or even small fires in flats.

But a total burned down house is absolutely rare. When such things happens it is in the news in the evening. Same applies for blown up houses due to a gas leak. At least it is that way in my part of the world.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[jythie]

I think the point is not that it was solved, but that it was 'mostly' solved.

Modern construction, fire codes, and firefighting techniques have resulted in a massive decrease in both number of initial fires and the fire's ability to spread. So while we still need fire departments, the problem of fire has been mostly taken care of.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[jythie]

I recall when I was in school studying engineering, some professors actively encouraged us to look into financial work..... and over the last 3 months my team has actually lost 2 engineers to NYC financial companies. So yeah.. this is a significant issues.

Even I have been approached with financial work.. but I love engineering too much to transition... so there is some incentive to stay in the field... but you really gotta love what you do.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[PiMuNu]

As an accelerator physicist (who doesn't know how to do slashdot formatting)

The basic physics is in a sort of golden age right now. Every 10-20 years we have discovered one or more new *fundamental forms of matter* - like discovering a new sort of electron or whatever (think 6 quarks, 6 leptons). Every 10-20 years we have discovered a new unification theory or fundamental law of physics - like maxwell did with unification of electricity and magnetism, or newton did with unification of planetary motion and gravitational motion (think gluons, W+-, Z0). So I think the idea that basic physics is not discovering things is wrong.

What is problematic is the amount of resources required to access the physics of each thing is steadily increasing. We aren't getting (much) better at building particle accelerators, we are just throwing more money at the problem. So it costs 10 billion euros to access LHC scale physics, making developing anything practical from it basically impossible. The reason we don't have a light source in every lab is that the cost of accessing the GeV energy scale is 0.5 billion euros. We do have a few per continent, but it doesn't look like it will become possible anytime soon to make this cheaper.

Some technologies provide us with hope. Superconducting magnets are getting cheaper. Wakefield type accelerators may make things cheaper (though they look horribly inefficient). But for the foreseeable future, there will be no synchrotron ray guns or neutrino radios because the cost of making a high intensity xray or neutrino beam is just too much...

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Maury Markowitz]

> When the electron was discovered it was thought to be absolutely worthless

That's completely untrue. It was well understood at the time that the discovery of the electron, and its properties, would allow all sorts of useful results. After all, we use electricity.

> Discovering the higgs will fill in the biggest hole in the standard model

So what? We don't use Higgstricity. Nor do we use topquarkicity. We discovered the top quark just about two decades ago, and its effect on the world has been pretty much zero.

As others have, and will, point out, there is a lot of spin-off work. However, it is important to note that that's largely mined out too. Its not that nothing good comes out of these projects, just that the return on investment is rapidly flatlining. There's a difference between those two statements, and it's a very important one.

> it's a fantastic research facility that funds some of the greatest scientists on Earth

So then it's welfare? In the US?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[tehcyder]

Why do you think that in a capitalist society you should be able to do something you love for a living?

The vast majority of people do jobs they tolerate at best. Do you think the people working in supermarkets or burger joints enjoy it?

I know all you free marketeers will say that at least you have the choice to do what you want, but in fact 90% of people don't have any choice at all. And, no, you won't all be President one day.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Maury Markowitz]

> ITER [wikipedia.org] would like to disagree with you there.

Having written a significant portion of the articles on fusion on the wiki, let me pull a Woody Allen and just say you don't know what you're talking about.

There is little doubt that ITER will indeed reach the levels of ignition, net positive energy output, and continuous burn. However, the cost of doing so is enormous. So large that such a machine will never, ever, pay for itself. Sure, that might change if electricity prices go up, but only to the point where you'd have to be using candles for lighting.

There are some faint glimmers of hope, like the ST and fast ignition work, but we've been down this road before (IEC, levitrons, spheromaks, literally hundreds of ideas) that turned out not to work when you scaled them up.

As someone who _does_ have a good understanding of the issues, let me just say that I do not expect to live to see commercial fusion power.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Maury Markowitz]

> A much more efficient system would be for them to just pay a fee like any other fee-for-service system

That's exactly how it does work. Email the Diamond Light Source and arrange to ship a crystal to them.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Maury Markowitz]

> ISS: €100 billion

Indeed, the cutting starts there.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[tehcyder]

What I can however guarantee you: if you don't spend any on science, you finish burning the Quran as a civic duty or having laws that punish blasphemy by death. Is it better?

There's nothing about science in itself that leads to a more liberal society, Iran could produce nuclear weapons, it wouldn't stop them stoning someone to death.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[tehcyder]

A Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier

That sounds like a joke, is it true?

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[tehcyder]

The total health-care budget (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP) was $753 Billion.

What most impresses outsiders is that the US manages to have both one of the most expensive, and one of the most useless health care systems in the (developed) world.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Khomar]

Agreed, tax increases should be considered, however we have also lost a lot of jobs, and the consumer debt in America is very high. What this means is that there are fewer people who can actually afford to pay taxes. There comes a point where you can no longer increasing taxes because the damage caused to the economy due to lack of available capital actually results in less revenue for the government. We are dangerously close to that condition.

When you find yourself unable to increase revenue, you must cut back on your spending to balance your budget. I wonder if people would be more willing to pay more taxes if they felt they could trust government to use it wisely. Given the government's track record, I would rather have government cut back than to give them yet another loan to waste on their excesses.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[davester666]

No need for cuffs. Guns are the solution. Everybody gets one, but you only get one bullet.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Bromskloss]

The thing is, they don't have much of a passion for finance either (it does have interesting bits, just not where everyone thinks).

I find financial markets in general rather interesting and would love to hear what interesting bits you have in mind.

I'm an engineer too who is thinking about how to get into the financial world. I'm biting my tongue not to ask you what your niche is, because I realise you might not want to divulge that. Any information on what kinds of niches there are at all would be very welcome, though.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[tj_thompson]

There's no conceivable restructuring of society that allows us to use quantum field theory or string theory where we couldn't before.

Wait, your argument is "I can't think of a use for it, so there must not be one"? I bet that's never been said before.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[LordNacho]

Interesting bits of finance? Well, of course it's a bit subjective. There's a lot of things that look like they're technically interesting, such as various complex derivatives, but I think the real value in those is having a sales guy reeling in the client. In fact, a HUGE number of bank/finance jobs seem to have this characteristic.

The real interesting stuff is devising your own trading strategies. You're trying to find something that orthodoxy for many years thought impossible. And most likely, anyone who found good contrary evidence didn't publish. So it's pretty thin what you have to start with; a field where your own discoveries are actually your own, even though probably other people have come up with similar ideas (and aren't telling). Having no orthodoxy is great for seeing whether you actually understand how statistics work, and in the wider picture, how one discovers anything.

By the way, with your background, there's a good chance you'll be shoehorned into some derivs type thing. You'll definitely be able to do it, although there's some new math. It's initially interesting (pick up the autobiography of Emmanuel Derman), and definitely pays well, but ultimately loses it's lustre. I think the gold rush from science to Wall Street has had it's day, and you and I weren't on one of the first wagons.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[TangoMargarine]

Plus, y'know, the Tevatron actually works for more than 3 minutes at a time. /sarcasm

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[khallow]

Wait, your argument is "I can't think of a use for it, so there must not be one"? I bet that's never been said before.

Opportunity cost. I can't think of a use for it, but I can think of a scientific use for a lot of things with smaller price tags.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Bromskloss]

The real interesting stuff is devising your own trading strategies. You're trying to find something that orthodoxy for many years thought impossible. And most likely, anyone who found good contrary evidence didn't publish. So it's pretty thin what you have to start with; a field where your own discoveries are actually your own, even though probably other people have come up with similar ideas (and aren't telling). Having no orthodoxy is great for seeing whether you actually understand how statistics work, and in the wider picture, how one discovers anything.

Excellent! That is something I would love to do. It goes very well with the fascination for Bayes's theorem I have picked up recently. It's the formula to rule the world!

I dearly wish I had a dataset to experiment with, but lacking practical experience of this world, I don't really know where to look for it, what data may be useful and what timescales are relevant.

By the way, with your background, there's a good chance you'll be shoehorned into some derivs type thing. You'll definitely be able to do it, although there's some new math. It's initially interesting (pick up the autobiography of Emmanuel Derman), and definitely pays well, but ultimately loses it's lustre. I think the gold rush from science to Wall Street has had it's day, and you and I weren't on one of the first wagons.

Looks like good reading. I'll pick it up as soon as I finish the book on Bayesian inference I'm entertaining myself with right now.

Thank you for sharing your insights. I appreciate this very much.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[c0lo]

What I can however guarantee you: if you don't spend any on science, you finish burning the Quran as a civic duty or having laws that punish blasphemy by death. Is it better?

There's nothing about science in itself that leads to a more liberal society, Iran could produce nuclear weapons, it wouldn't stop them stoning someone to death.

The presence of science in a society, no.
However, I argued that the absence of science in a modern society leads to a fundamentalistic religious social structure.

To pinpoint the failure in your argumentation: if "A=>B", it doesn't necessary follow that "non-A=>non-B", but it does follow that "non-B=>non-A".
In this case, "If Iran's society would stop being fundamentalist, then the science must be present in their society" (granted, a bit of stretched... But if you replace "science" with "rational/critical thinking" the statement would be true).

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[guacamole]

I know the US has gotten a lot of bad rap for Iraq WMD fiasco, and is viewed as a more evil entity right now. However, it's also the other force in the world that is trying to counter truly mad regimes of the world. Just look at the potential conflict areas today, North Korea and Iran. These two countries are literally blackmailing the rest of the world. The other NATO members are too broke to be taken seriously. USA is the only country that bears the cost of containing those two regimes. But I do get your point. There is so much waste in military spending. Just look at the F-22 and the C-17 programs that seems to be impossible to terminate. Our military-industrial complex has too much influence over the congress. Otherwise, we could easily maintain a military as strong as right now AND spend more money on science.

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[LordNacho]

About the datasets, you may find this is a problem. Many firms collect their own, in their own format databases. (You'll definitely need to be familiar with DBs.) But also purchasing data can be very, very expensive, especially the more granular data (short timescales). The principles are of course the same, so if you want to analyse some free data that you find, you will still learn something. But I think the effects you're looking for might not appear at shorter timescales. All depends on what you're looking for!

Also, I'd add that there is value in experiencing the markets each day. You'll have more of an idea about what's spurious and what's real.

Good luck!

Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong

[Bromskloss]

Thanks a lot! Cheers!

Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[Picardo85]

If there actually is a Higgs Boson

Re:Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[hedwards]

That was my thought, we're assuming that the Higgs Boson exists, and proving that it doesn't is going to be a lot more difficult then proving that it does. Science tends to do a lot better proving a positive than a negative.

Re:Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[Chris Burke]

Well after X amount of time making Y amount of observations, you can say that you would have less than probability Z of not seeing a Higgs if it existed. When Z gets really small, people start concluding that it probably doesn't exist.

This has already happened for various ranges of Higgs masses; the Tevatron in particular has ruled many of them out. And the theory itself puts limits on the Higgs mass. So if at some point in the future we can say there's only an infinitesimal chance of the Higgs having avoided our detection anywhere in its possible mass range, well, then it's time to go back to the theoretical drawing board.

Re:Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[glwtta]

If there actually is a Higgs Boson

Wait, so you're saying that if the Higgs doesn't exist, we have more than one hope of finding it?

Re:Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[lennier]

So if at some point in the future we can say there's only an infinitesimal chance of the Higgs having avoided our detection anywhere in its possible mass range, well, then it's time to go back to the theoretical drawing board.

That would be a good thing on the whole, right? If a key part of the Standard Model is reasonably conclusively falsified, then we get to rethink the whole deal rather than just propping up the epicycles. And if we rethink, then perhaps we can start making real advances.

I suppose if the LHC leads to that, then it's money well spent no matter how expensive it is (and in a world where $65 million only buys you a New York musical, a few billion here and there is spare change).

Re:Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[Chris Burke]

That would be a good thing on the whole, right? If a key part of the Standard Model is reasonably conclusively falsified, then we get to rethink the whole deal rather than just propping up the epicycles. And if we rethink, then perhaps we can start making real advances.

Many scientists are hoping for just that, exactly because of the amazing new doors it would open. Though not really because they have a bone to pick like you seem to... the Standard Model is hardly a matter of propping up epicycles. It's a fantastically elegant theory with incredibly successful predictive power.

To think we can only make real advances by abandoning the Standard Model is to make an unsupported presumption that it's holding back our understanding of the true nature of the universe.

Re:Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[prefec2]

if !higgsBoson then standardTheory = remodelTheory(standardTheory)

Re:Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[Sockatume]

Why is that a conditional? If the higgs doesn't exist, then the LHC is also our best hope of disproving, or at least thoroughly circumscribing, its existence.

Re:Looks like the LHC is our only hope....

[diggitzz]

Exactly. And in any case, the TeV was already ruled out as capable of producing one, at least 5 years ago, IIRC. I believe this was ruled out by theory *and* other experiments, reducing the possible Higgs range to a really heavy Higgs that would require at least the energy of the LHC to produce. But, maybe things have changed?

Budget cuts

[onyxruby]

Budget cuts, the one divide by zero scenario science can't route around.

Re:Budget cuts

[diggitzz]

Two words: Unpaid Interns.

The truth

[Anonymous Coward]

What they're not telling us it that, if it continues to run much longer, Tevatron will become self-aware, reshape itself into a giant humanoid robot, and proceed to rampage across the world destroying everything in its path with proton beams. When will man learn that science inevitably leads to the destruction of its own species?

Re:The truth

[Yvan256]

I see I'm not the only one who thought the name was similar to Terra-Tron.

My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[CrazyJim1]

Bill Clinton spent billions on a supercollider in Texas, and half way through its completion, he canceled the project.

The guy was an economic genius and what this country needs to get itself out of debt, but he failed in that situation.

Physics research can be greater than money because of the new discoveries it brings mankind, but all you know this.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Clinton spent billions on a supercollider in Texas, and half way through its completion, he canceled the project.

As I remember it, the project lost support as the number of potential sites was narrowed down, because the politicians just wanted the big wad of cash for their state rather than the science it would produce. When it was down to one state, you basically had one state's politicians supporting it.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Beat The Odds]

The guy was an economic genius and what this country needs to get itself out of debt, but he failed in that situation.

Now I know why your user name has Crazy in it!

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Beelzebud]

The supercollider found its funding in 1991, and was defunded by congress (as the president doesn't directly get to control the budget) the year he became president.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Yvan256]

I said, super collider, I just met her! And then they made a super collider 2. Thank you. - Humor Bot 5.0

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics research can be greater than money because of the new discoveries it brings mankind, but all you know this.

Sorry, I'm a Slashdot-style armchair libertarian. I believe that the government cannot possibly do anything right, that being taxed is stealing my hard-earned money, and that everything the government does can be done better by the private sector. Furthermore, I believe that, with the exception of the freedoms and rights with which we were imbued, the only thing that matters in the world is money: everything has a value, and things which have no quantifiable value have no value at all.

Please explain to me why I should be in favor of the government funding particle physics research.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[bhcompy]

You have the bone structure of an economic GENIUS!

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[afidel]

Uh, the dude got a Rhodes scholarship to go study political science and economics at Oxford. That puts him in the top .000001% of all college students, which most people would consider genius level. Amazingly his wife is possibly even smarter. You might not like their politics but to question their intelligence just shows your own ignorance.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[LWATCDR]

Exactly how was Clinton an economic genius?
He presided over a huge stock bubble. Pets.com, Linux.com, and how many other dotcoms that where worth nothing but valued at billions?
Oh and record low oil prices to boot.
If he had been a genius he would have increased the interest rate and raised the fuel tax and tried to manage the bubble. Instead he just hopped it would last until he was out office.
"Like every other politician ."

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Relic of the Future]

That's not quite how it happened.

Clinton's support wasn't enthusiastic, and DoE came out against it, but when congress cut its funding, Clinton asked them to reconsider.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[peragrin]

Please explain to me why I should be in favor of the government funding particle physics research.

Your using a computer and the internet that were created initially because of government funding. if government fun ding didn't exist The average computer would still be the size of a house and you couldn't connect two of them together. The Government funds the initial money losing half of the science. DARPA's crazy ideas don't always work but they push things in new directions. Look at how many tries the autonomous car, or power armor has been in development. Very few businesses would fund things that long with zero return on investment.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Sponge Bath]

Please explain to me why I should be in favor of the government funding particle physics research.

Why don't you step into the box with the cat for a quick demonstration.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[ianare]

Actually, Clinton stopped and even reversed the disastrous fiscal policies of Reagan and Bush. Unfortunately, Bush II undid all of that work ...

See for yourself

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[hedwards]

Because without government funding of science, corporations would have no research to exploit for profit, duh.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[AJWM]

When it was down to one state, you basically had one state's politicians supporting it.

Unfortunately, the Four Corners area really is out in the middle of nowhere; and Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico even together don't have huge clout in the House.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[diegocg]

The dotcom bubble didn't really affect that much to the rest of the economy. It didn't bring banks down (banks weren't able to build their assets on top of the bubble), it didn't bring other sectors down. I remember some economist saying that it was a good example of a "good bubble" - a bubble that happens in only one sector and doesn't affect anything else.

Also, Bill Clinton managed to get the debt under control. Which is an impressive achievement in USA.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the dude got a Rhodes scholarship to go study political science and economics at Oxford. That puts him in the top .000001% of all college students, which most people would consider genius level. Amazingly his wife is possibly even smarter. You might not like their politics but to question their intelligence just shows your own ignorance

Well, I don't know about Bill's and Hillary's intelligence (although the fact that they toe the Democratic Party line makes them "pretty stupid" in my book, although still above the "Sarah Palin" level), but considering that you're correlating "Rhodes scholarship" with "genius" makes you pretty stupid.

Fun fact: Ph.D degrees are given to a lot of stupid people. They just work harder than you do.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[mathmathrevolution]

It looks like your biggest complaint about Bill Clinton is total bullshit then since it was Congress that defunded the Superconducting Supercollider, not the President.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Gibbs-Duhem]

I do agree that Clinton is a bright guy... but...

Getting a Rhodes scholarship in college does not put you on the list of the smartest 50 people on the planet... if for no other reason than that there are 32 chosen every year. Assuming a modest lifespan for the recipients of 50 years, and assuming a Rhodes scholarship makes you smarter than anyone but another person with a Rhodes scholarship, you're still off by at least one order of magnitude! ;-) Maaaybe top .0001%, but not .000001%!

I've met a lot of very smart people. The ones who *I* would classify as true geniuses (and I'm actually probably just barely qualified to judge) never bothered with things like the Rhodes. They had better things to do than do yet more school in England when there's so much exciting science to do!

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Chris Burke]

Interesting you point that out, when Congress is the one that spends the money, not the President, and the best term during the Clinton years was a Republican Congress. I'm not attempting to make a political statement with this, but I do want to point out that despite our strong president system, the reality is that the President has no direct economic power. He suggests a budget and can push through certain bills like tax cuts or health care etc., but the spending falls on Congress, so any budget deficit/surplus blame/credit goes to Congress.

No direct power, but clearly a lot of indirect power to steer the direction of Congress. So it's too simplistic to just say any blame/credit must go solely to Congress, since a lot of the time the good/bad legislation they pass wouldn't exist were it not for the President's actions.

Let's revise with this in mind then, shall we?

The best years were with Clinton in the Presidency and a Republican-controlled Congress.

Interesting.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[SETIGuy]

Bill Clinton spent billions on a supercollider in Texas, and half way through its completion, he canceled the project.

Ah, revisionist conservative history rears it's ugly head. The SSC's location in Texas should point out that the real benefactor was Bush, Sr and the rest of the Texas "conservatives". If it had been located in a more logical place and had less political influence in the site selection, maybe it wouldn't have been cancelled. As I recall the announcement, it was a real WTF moment.

Maybe you should leave the history to those of us that can remember it.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Sulphur]

Please explain to me why I should be in favor of the government funding particle physics research.

Why don't you step into the box with the cat for a quick demonstration.

If he fits in the box, then it was a big cat. There may be other difficulties.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Moridin42]

Not all that interesting.. each side kills the extreme, stupid ideas of the other (they're both full of 'em) and what we're left with is a least shitty, won't-make-anybody-happy medium. That's a republic at work.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[bruthasj]

They should have picked a location that spanned four states.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[geekoid]

Bush also recognized Reagan horrible economic policy. He coined the term 'Voodoo Economics'. Clinton hired the right people to solve specific issues.
Bring in economic greats, and then listen; where as in the last 10 years the republican only bring in 'yes' men. It's a shame, they used to be people looking to solve issues instead of making shit up and then belaboring logical fallacies. Not even good ones. They just spout Ad Homs and people think they are right.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[geekoid]

Clinton tried to prevent the cancellation by asking Congress to continue "to support this important and challenging effort" through completion because "abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science"

Another person making shit up in order to make Clinton look bad? How about some facts? no? of course not, you're a tool.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[syousef]

Uh, the dude got a Rhodes scholarship to go study political science and economics at Oxford. That puts him in the top .000001% of all college students, which most people would consider genius level. Amazingly his wife is possibly even smarter. You might not like their politics but to question their intelligence just shows your own ignorance.

Sometimes being a top achiever in highschool doesn't make you the best in the real world.

He was smart enough to become president. Yet he wasn't smart enough not to get caught lying under oath about sex acts with an Intern.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[thegarbz]

What if we sped him up to light speed, and then suddenly enclosed the box around him.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[sgt101]

Bill & Hillary don't tow the line - they write it.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[bledri]

. . .

He was smart enough to become president. Yet he wasn't smart enough not to get caught lying under oath about sex acts with an Intern.

Thank God we spent $40 million dollars on a perpetual witch hunt to determine that JFK had better taste in women. Yes, he should have had the balls to take the fifth. Or maybe he could have tried "I don't recall," that always seems to work for the rich and connected.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[bledri]

Sorry, I'm a Slashdot-style armchair libertarian. I believe that the government cannot possibly do anything right, that being taxed is stealing my hard-earned money, and that everything the government does can be done better by the private sector. Furthermore, I believe that, with the exception of the freedoms and rights with which we were imbued, the only thing that matters in the world is money: everything has a value, and things which have no quantifiable value have no value at all.

Please explain to me why I should be in favor of the government funding particle physics research.

Why is Steven Colbert posting Anonymously? Dude, I love your show!

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[CompMD]

Such pedantry reminds me that THIS IS SLASHDOOOTTTTTT, but then I remember we're talking about the wrong part of Greece: Rhodes, not Sparta.

Re:My biggest complaint about Bill Clinton

[Phoenix666]

Bill Clinton is, however, amazingly incompetent when it comes to managing anything. When he was governor and president, he inherited bureaucracies that mostly ran on auto-pilot. He's never built anything or done anything where he actually had to know what he was doing.

Re:fabulous! more money for wars to keep us safe

[oh-dark-thirty]

Cause what's Science going to do for you anyway ?

Science will help build better weapons, you silly goose!

Well

[Barrinmw]

According to my father-in-law who works at fermilab, they pretty much are focusing on the hunt for sterile neutrinos at the moment. They essentially are leaving the search for the higgs to LHC anyway.

Re:Well

[McTickles]

And the LHC will eventually leave higgs to the SLHC which will still be too flimsy to pull it off but physics lovers will masturbate to it nonetheless ...

--
http://www.twilightcampaign.net/

Re:Well

[Chris Burke]

And the LHC will eventually leave higgs to the SLHC which will still be too flimsy to pull it off but physics lovers will masturbate to it nonetheless ...

Actually if I'm not mistaken the LHC has enough energy to cover the maximum theoretical Higgs mass. So if the LHC doesn't find it, then it'll be left to the SLHC to blow the doors open on this mystery and give us the clues to what's really happening. Assuming the LHC itself won't do that; it's always possible that the Higgs doesn't exist but the LHC can find many new amazing things that do.

Re:Well

[McTickles]

>> what's really happening

As if you can find out with your flimsy technology, human!

*mwahahaha*

--

http://www.twilightcampaign.net/

Re:Well

[Chris Burke]

Look just because our technology can be disabled by a baguette-carrying pigeon doesn't mean it's too "flimsy" to discover the secrets of the universe!

Or does it? /trying to trick secrets of the universe from the alien.

DOE response gives a peek at the future

[Anonymous Coward]

From the quoted DOE letter:

Given the LHC performance to date, it appears likely that experiments at the LHC either will rule out or discover a standard model Higgs boson by late 2012

This is somewhat of an open secret in the LHC community. However, I thought it was something Not-To-Be-Discussed-In-Public.

Re:DOE response gives a peek at the future

[maxwell demon]

From the quoted DOE letter:

Given the LHC performance to date, it appears likely that experiments at the LHC either will rule out or discover a standard model Higgs boson by late 2012

This is somewhat of an open secret in the LHC community. However, I thought it was something Not-To-Be-Discussed-In-Public.

Probably the exact date is December 21, 2012. :-)

Reading further... not the end, just a shift

[ka9dgx]

There are updates which need to be read past the initial article....

The HEP program also calls for a world-leading program centred at FNAL to probe the Standard Model using a complementary approach of high intensity beams. This program aims to measure the fundamental properties of neutrinos and to develop a new high intensity proton source. In evaluating the proposed Tevatron extension, the P5 committee emphasized the importance of developing this Intensity Frontier program and we have made implementation of this program a cornerstone of future HEP activities.

It seems to me they are going to have to do some redesign to get the beam currents way up, and then they will be back in the game.

The Budget Ax Cuts Off Our Nose to Spite Our Face.

[oDDmON oUT]

Another shining example of basic science exploration falling prey to the short sighted budgetary whims of bureaucrats elected on an ephemeral basis.

Costs

[exabrial]

Tevatron is a ridiculous project to shut down... But hey, everyone wanted free health care, we want the government to employ 67,000 people to violate our constitutional rights, 'out' senators have free healthcare for life and get a raise every year (by law)... Sorry Tevatron, but you're just not important enough!

Curiously though, I looked at our national budget, for 2010: $3.55Trillion, and I decided what to see what I could buy for $3.55 Trillion:

• All of IBM
• All of Microsoft
• All of Apple
• 5 NFL Teams

Isn't that great? Oh and with the $2.7Trillion left over you'd be able to rent the entire island of Jamaica for a nice weekend vacation.

Re:Costs

[hedwards]

Tevatron is a ridiculous project to shut down... But hey, everyone wanted free health care

Well, for one thing, the health care isn't going to be free, and it never was promised to be free. It was promised to be available and affordable, time will tell whether or not they over promised.

Additionally, the cost of providing the health care will be less than the projections were for the costs to the private sector over the next 10 years.

In other words, bash health care all you like, it's just not the budget breaker that the DoD budget is. Last estimates I saw were $100bn per year for healthcare and $700bn per year for DoD. Even under normal circumstances the DoD funding would come in at $400bn significantly more than healthcare.

Re:Costs

[lgw]

The current big budget items are (in Billions):

• $793 - Medicare/iad
• $701 - Social Security
• $693 - Defense and Wars
• $433 - Income Security (Welfare, Food Stamps)
• $203 - Interest
• $199 - Federal Pensions
• $470 - Everything else

The deficit is $1334 billion this year - that's right, we spend more than 100% of federal revenues on programs for the old and poor already. The defense budgeant and everything else the government does is just an afterthought, budget-wise. These charity programs are helpful to society, no doubt, but we already spend 60% more than we make overall - we have to do less, not more.

Missdirection - Idiots.

[cosm]

So the entire purpose of the Tevatron in the eyes of the politicians is that of a facility that will either find/not find the Higgs? The political community and those in control of the purse-strings only want the ability of Nationalistic chest-pumping of verifying Peter Higg's field and mass generating boson, but aside from that I am fairly sure science goes out the window past the international pissing contest. Are you telling me that a particle acceleration facility like that has not future economically or scientifically stimulating value, and that the immediate value of undercutting funding / shutdown is higher than the long-term scientific value to humanity?!?!

Until bankers and high-frequency traders discover a Unified Field Theory, or politicians can deduce a solution to the Riemann Hypothesis, or the lobbyist can solve Navier-Stokes, leave the big-boys alone to do Real Work (TM). Otherwise we will continually squander true talent in this country, pushing those with scientific inclinations to other parts of the world where it is actually valued.

Re:Missdirection - Idiots.

[Thud457]

Weren't a lot of the " quants " responsible for the great recession mathematicians and physicists lured from academia by the better pay working building models for the banks?
Maybe we should be pouring more money into science so these pointdexters don't continue to wreak havoc on things they only think they understand.

Re:Missdirection - Idiots.

[glwtta]

Until bankers and high-frequency traders discover a Unified Field Theory

To be fair, they probably would, if they took a few weeks off from making massive stacks of cash. If you don't think that's where many of the most talented "big boys" are, you're deluding yourself out of some naive sense of misplaced idealism.

Re:Missdirection - Idiots.

[lennier]

Maybe we should be pouring more money into science so these pointdexters don't continue to wreak havoc on things they only think they understand.

Yes, much better to have them poking sticks into the unfathomable infinite eternal wassnames of the very fabric of existence.

On second thoughts, maybe it's just as well that the Tevatron didn't find a thousand new ways to blow up the world with a Bic lighter.

Re:Missdirection - Idiots.

[prefec2]

Until now, the US pays a lot of money to get scientist to work in the US, as the US does not educate enough scientists. When I look at the present politics and decision trends in the US, I doubt that the US has much use for those foreigners anymore. And that is not because the education system increased its output.

Re:The Budget Ax Cuts Off Our Nose to Spite Our Fa

[Maury Markowitz]

...or a completely pointless program that has turned up nothing useful for decades?

No really, are you happy that we now know the top quark mass to the 4th decimal? If I gave you millions of dollars, would you buy that number?

Crowdfunding Opportunity

[NEDHead]

I suggest a kickstarter effort to acquire the Tevatron and then do cool stuff...

Re:Crowdfunding Opportunity

[stox]

The operating budget for the Tevatron was about $250MM/year. That would be one big crowd to pull that off.

Re:Crowdfunding Opportunity

[NEDHead]

Perhaps we could recycle some of the ions. And sell advertising. And have a bake sale.

Re:Crowdfunding Opportunity

[stox]

Correction: The budget to run the Tevatron is only $35MM/year. So, only $105MM to run it until 2014. The $250MM/year was for the entire lab.

Re:Crowdfunding Opportunity

[SnarfQuest]

Can we get enough money from people who just want to use it to microwave burrito's, or blow things up?

How much of an explosion could you get out of it, anyway? I'd donate a buck to see something explode.

The problem with the supercollider was the name

[PolygamousRanchKid]

When Congress wanted to make some spending cuts, something called the "Superconducting Supercollider" is an obvious candidate. If they had named it instead, "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Collider" it would have been running right now.

Budget cut necessary...

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

to finance the war.

Re:Simple solution:

[SETIGuy]

Eliminate #4. Much like your housing in retirement, your health care is not a burden to be carried by the rest of us. Take responsibility for yourself.

Post again non-anonymously so we can watch you make good on your plans to forgo Social Security and Medicare.

I thought so.

Well, to be honest...

[publiclurker]

it doesn't take an economic genius to recognize that Regan and Bush's fiscal policies were loads of crap.

Re:Simple solution:

[lgw]

Social Security and Medicare are only good ideas to the extent that they are sustainable. The current programs domainate the federal budget and are still no where near to sustainable. In order to meet the promises we have made to current and future retirees, we would need to collect and extra $1,013,000 or so per taxpayer over and above current taxes. That's just not going to happen, not even spread across 40 years. The system sounds nice, but the math doesn't work.

So, we can recognize the problem and arrange a graceful exit for the programs where those under 45 or so are told up front "start saving, because the programs won't be there for you - here's how we'll help you do that", or we can just ignore the math and watch it fail catastrophically, when either the government just stops sending checks, or your monthly SS check will buy a loaf of bread due to inflation.

Everyone under 45 or so should be planning to forgo Social Security and Medicare, because those systems are unliekly to survive in their present form. And no amount of cancelled science project will make any difference at all to that - we spend peanuts on science compared to these programs.

Re:Simple solution:

[SETIGuy]

Social Security and Medicare are only good ideas to the extent that they are sustainable. The current programs domainate the federal budget and are still no where near to sustainable. In order to meet the promises we have made to current and future retirees, we would need to collect and extra $1,013,000 or so per taxpayer over and above current taxes. That's just not going to happen, not even spread across 40 years. The system sounds nice, but the math doesn't work.

Then make it needs tested. And/Or get rid of the caps on payroll taxes. Either would solve the problem for the forseeable future. Just because Republican Party doesn't want to fix it doesn't mean that it can't be fixed. Conservatives have been trying to kill both programs (or worse divert their funds to their corporate friends in the name of privatization) ever since they were started, out of philosophical reasons rather than economic ones. Republicans serve only the rich, and the rich don't need Social Security. Therefore they think nobody should have it. In the Republican "meritocracy" it's a given that wealth is synonymous with merit. The poor are obviously poor by choice or sloth and don't deserve any assistance.

You would think that living in a world where being unemployed is the biggest impediment to getting a job (We don't like to hire the unemployed) even conservatives would start to see reality. Guess not.

Re:The Budget Ax Cuts Off Our Nose to Spite Our Fa

[oDDmON oUT]

"...or a completely pointless program that has turned up nothing useful..."

Didn't the pundits of that time say something similar to the Curies?

Sometimes the next big thing is found through perseverance, and who's better qualified to say when to pull the plug and close the door on a one-of-a-kind research facility, a nuclear physicist or a career politician?

Re:Simple solution:

[lgw]

Then make it needs tested. And/Or get rid of the caps on payroll taxes. Either would solve the problem for the forseeable future.

Have you actually looked at the numbers, or do you simply hope that's true? If we doubled the revenue from payroll taxes (both employee and employer portion), that wouldn't even get us to a budget surplus. And if we tried, the struggling economy would likely collapse and we get less total federal revenue instead of more.

Also, Social Security is already means tested - if you make a non-trivial retirement income on your own, your SS checks are taxable. If you've been financially responsible, the government already gives you 25% or so less. I suspect you mean make that more extreme? But even if we set the total SS outlays to $0, we still don't balance the budget!

In summary, the budget is, roughly:

• 100% of revenue - charity for the old and poor (medicare/aid, SS, welfare, federal pensions, etc).
• 30% of revenue - defense
• 10% of revenue - interest
• 20% of revenue - everything else the government does

We have an enourmous federal debt to pay down, and we're running out of people to loan us money. We simply cannot keep going forward without our existing programs, and minor tweaks to SS won't come close to fixing the problem. Raising taxes won't come close to fixing the problem (we may not be at the peak of the Laffer curve, but we're close). "Austerity" isn't just for the PIIGS - it's America's future as well.

Several notes about Fermilab

[stox]

1) Scientists will be analyzing data from the Tevatron for years to come. Just because new data is no longer being produced doesn't mean the science stops.

2) Bob Young, one of the founders of Red Hat, credits Fermilab's adoption of Linux as one of the most significant events in success of Linux.

3) Fermilab pioneered the application of super-conductors for use in building the Tevatron.

4) The term "computing farms" was coined at Fermilab.

5) Both the bottom and top quarks were discovered at Fermilab. There is still a lot of science that can be done understanding both. The cancellation of BTev was tragic.

6) The original Linux CD driver was developed by one of the members of the DZero experiment at Fermilab.

Old friend, we will miss you.

Re:Several notes about Fermilab

[PiMuNu]

3) Fermilab pioneered the application of super-conductors for use in building the Tevatron.

Humm... you might want to check that

Re:Several notes about Fermilab

[stox]

Here you go

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cen-v058n007.p031

Fermilab pioneers superconductivity scaleup

Clearly, the engineering problems of large-scale superconductivity are formidable. But it seems they are not insurmountable. The first such project is already well under way, providing lessons that likely will prove invaluable in all future attempts. That project is the Tevatron, the 1000-GeV superconducting proton accelerator now under construction at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in ...

I suggest looking at TFA

[uranus65]

The woman who wrote it is freaking gorgeous and way smarter than me...which isn't saying much.

This is whatg happens

[geekoid]

when you cut taxes for the sake of cutting taxes.

But I'm sure the private sector will spend the money to build the next collider~

Nothing like watching the invisible hand of the free market strangling our culture and science.

Re:The Budget Ax Cuts Off Our Nose to Spite Our Fa

[geekoid]

A) it continues to turn up useful data.

B) Yes.

You short sighted idiots that think if it's not right in front of you then it's not producing anything are killing science.

Not a budget cut...just better spent elsewhere

[Roger W Moore]

One silly recession, and everyone's going all budget cuts crazy.

This is not a cut to the US science budget - it is just that scientists themselves think that the money they do have is better spent elsewhere. The chance for the Tevatron to see the Higgs, even with twice the data, is small enough to start with. When pitted against a working machine with 3.5 times higher energy and higher luminosity there are simply more interesting things to spend the money on....and I say that as someone who worked on the Tevatron but who is admittedly now working on the LHC.

While it would certainly be good in the long term for society to put a far higher priority on science than it does that does not always mean that every time a program is cut it is for the wrong reasons. Sometimes shutting down a program IS justified and, while somewhat sad, there does come a point where other projects in the field offer more productive areas for scientific exploration.

Re:Simple solution:

[246o1]

Federal pensions are not 'charity' - they are job perks guaranteed to our employees at the time of their employment, and reneging on those guarantees is reprehensible.

$35m/yr is the cheap phase

[billstewart]

This think cost a lot of money to build, but the operating costs aren't that high. Bill Gates is busy trying to cure malaria, and having his own particle accelerator would just go along with his Bond Villain image, but maybe Paul Allen would kick in some pocket change.

The most important part of the cost is "what other Real Science could the people who work on it be doing instead?" Would they be developing or researching things that are more important to the world than a new boson, such as more efficient solar cells, or would they be teaching undergrads, or developing military hardware that the world would be much better off without, or would they be working for Starbucks or Wall Street because there aren't any other good physics jobs around?

Re:Simple solution:

[lgw]

reneging on those guarantees is reprehensible

Equally true for all of it. Defined benefit pension plans are reprehensible: that are promises that you can't know you can keep. Everyone will have to share the pain - this is why there is rioting in the PIIGS countries, but riots or no, the money just isn't there. Now's the time to move all government employees to 401k plans like us peons have, so at least we have a chance at winding it down gracefully rather than just having it collapse.

2 > 1

[Garganus]

Sure it's anecdotal, but I've heard and read more news stories from the Tevatron than the LHC in the past two years (if you ignore the non-science "This and That Broken!" news pieces). It's grievous; don't begrudge our actually grieving it.

Re:Simple solution:

[SETIGuy]

Have you actually looked at the numbers, or do you simply hope that's true?

I have looked at the numbers. Your numbers assume that the current balance in the Social Security Trust Fund doesn't exist.

Re:Simple solution:

[SETIGuy]

We have an enourmous federal debt to pay down, and we're running out of people to loan us money.

If that were true government bond prices would be collapsing and interest rates would be skyrocketing.

I think you're spending to much time listening to economists from the Hoover Institute who think Hoover did everything right and that FDR was a communist. The truth is that "austerity" plans are the road to economic collapse. Sensible tax policy is what we need.

Re:For sale?

[SnarfQuest]

I have a large pile of old PC's and parts. I wonder it there would be enough room to store it all?

Maybe WikiLeaks could buy it to hide all their stuff in.

Re:Simple solution:

[lgw]

Your numbers assume that the current balance in the Social Security Trust Fund doesn't exist.

Nice one! You owe me a new keyboard.

Re:Simple solution:

[lgw]

If that were true government bond prices would be collapsing and interest rates would be skyrocketing.

Random average-perfoming fed bond fund.
Random average-perfoming muni bond fund.

We haven't yet run out of suckers, but the bond markets are starting to anticipate it. We're printing money as fast as we can right now to buy time, but QE2 was not well received by bond buyers, and we can't keep doing that for long. Default on some obligations seems certain for states like California (since the GOP house is unlikely to bail them out). We have a little bit of time right now because our foreign bondholders really don't want to start a race for the exit, but if someone blinks we're toast.

How do you imagine this will work? We each have to pay back the $126k that we (or our parents) borrowed - that's gonna suck pretty hard. How much more will you live on credit cards? This isn't like a mortgage, we can't just walk away from that debt.

Fermilab has its own rap video!

[funky49]

and I should know... I'm the rapper!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaG6umMkbxg

Re:Simple solution:

[SETIGuy]

How do you imagine this will work? We each have to pay back the $126k that we (or our parents) borrowed - that's gonna suck pretty hard. How much more will you live on credit cards? This isn't like a mortgage, we can't just walk away from that debt.

We've owed larger percentages of GDP in the past and survived (mostly through higher taxes on the wealthy). I'm reasonably wealthy, and could pay my $126k tomorrow. But, of course it doesn't work that way. (If it did, I would pay my $126k tomorrow and be done with it.) But through the progressive tax system I will end up paying more than $126k, whereas most people will pay much less. And I'm OK with that, because as someone who is reasonably wealthy, I have far more to lose from a government collapse than most people do. That's why I think taxes should be based upon a flat percentage of wealth rather than based upon income. A person with nothing has no real interest in the stability of the country and would probably gain mightily in a peasant revolt. Why should they pay taxes?

If reasonable GDP growth recovers, the current debt is managable. If GDP growth doesn't recover because of policies that continue to support the transfer of wealth overseas and because of job killing austerity measures, then we're screwed and either we'll default (wouldn't be the first time) or we'll inflate our way out of it (also wouldn't be the first time). I'd prefer GDP growth, of course, but with the GOP in control of the house, they're probably going to reduce federal payroll and bump up the unemployment rate and then income tax receipts will fall and ... Not to mention that the current one year payroll tax decrease is going to depress wages and tax receipts for years...

Re:Simple solution:

[lgw]

Higher marginal tax rates are proven not to raise significantly more federal revenue. If your sense of moral justice requires the successful be punished, public floggings would do just as much to increas federal revenues as "raising taxes on the rich". Federal revenues have been close to 19% of GDP ever since WWII, through a variety of tax schemes. Here is a nice presentation (it references its sources).

Taxing wealth, rather than income, is also known as "asset seizure by government", and would destroy us, because people would leave. We tax tangible wealth such as land because you can't move it to a different country, but intangible wealth would be moved to other markets in a hurry, and as that started to destroy the capital markets, there would be a race for the exits that would basically destroy the US stock and bond markets. Just the rumor that the government was pondering siezing 401k assets Venezuela-style caused people with a bunker mentality to transfer all assets out of their 401K and pay all the associated penalties. Remember - it does not require participation by the smartest investors for the rest to destroy a market.

Re:Simple solution:

[SETIGuy]

Higher marginal tax rates are proven not to raise significantly more federal revenue.

Bullshit. Heard of the Laffer Curve? Current marginal rates are well below the peak. It's not top marginal rate that's important it's revenue averaged rates. Because revenue needed to be maintained over that period, of course the percentage of GDP didn't change. Every tax cut was designed to preserve revenue. (Not to mention that your percentage of GDP is not just income taxes).

Taxing wealth, rather than income, is also known as "asset seizure by government",

I'm sure you think all taxes are "asset seizure by government." Glad you're not in government, because you'd be worse than the one we have. There wouldn't be any asset seizure (except in cases of failure to pay taxes for many years). Business and corporate taxes would drop to zero (because they would be paid by the owners/shareholders based upon the value of their shares rather than by the corporation). People with no net worth would pay nothing. Overall tax reciepts wouldn't be significantly changed, but it would be a hell of a lot more fair than the current situation. Sure, many ultra-rich people are opposed to any type of fair tax code and some would leave. But most corporations would love a zero tax environment.